Trojans stuckin the mud

PASADENA The right sleeve of his jacket hung there empty, with his arm tucked tightly inside.

Matt Barkley's injury could not be hidden on Saturday. Neither could anything else.

Barkley was driven into the Rose Bowl muck the way he wouldn't have been last year, before new UCLA coach Jim Mora looked at Anthony Barr and saw defense. Barr is now among the national leaders in sacks, and Barkley never saw or felt him from the back side, a strong commentary in itself.

Barkley was down for a while. An intensifying drizzle landed on all the gold ponchos in the USC section. Elsewhere, UCLA fans were daring to believe that the Bruins' first victory over USC since 2006, when Barkley was in the ninth grade at Mater Dei, was dawning.

Barkley got up and jogged off, dispelling fears of a real disablement, but the right arm was limp. Max Wittek replaced him and then handled the final, soaked series, which died near the Bruins goal line as the 38-28 game ended.

“Hats off to UCLA,” Barkley said later, in a brief appearance in a Rose Bowl tunnel. “Throws were there, throws weren't there. There were times guys were open. We made too many mistakes.”

All season they have. Barkley threw a pick to Aaron Hester on the first play of the game, threw another one to Eric Kendricks — so blatantly that Kendricks had no choice but to catch it — in the fourth quarter.

Marqise Lee lost a fumble, a field goal was blocked, a punt was tipped. USC now has lost 27 turnovers in 11 games, and they fall to 7-4, and await consignment to the type of fringe bowl game that was once televised by Mizlou.

Overrated? Teams don't rate themselves. To make USC the near-unanimous No. 1 team in August was a mass media failing, it's clear, but the Trojans had the same hopes.

Instead, the Trojans have been stumped by every challenge. Their seven victims had won a total of 29 games before Saturday, They have lost to Stanford, Oregon, Arizona and now UCLA. Now they meet Notre Dame, which is eyeing a BCS title game spot.

Someone asked Lee if the season now came down to busting Notre Dame's dreams.

“Pretty much,” he said.

Someone asked Coach Lane Kiffin if he was concerned about USC's readiness for the Irish, after this.

“Sure,” he said. “We have a lot of work to do.”

Kiffin usually isn't informative, but here he said that he has been assured he will return for a fourth season in 2013.

USC isn't as trigger-happy as the Lakers. Larry Smith got another year after he went 3-8 in 1991.

But it won't soothe the savage beasts in the fan base.

Neither did a weird fourth-down pass that sailed over Jaleel Pinner, who hasn't had a catch this year.

Neither did horrific tackling on Saturday, or the distaste for trusting the run game despite a 5.7-per-carry average, or back-to-back penalties by Randall Telfer and Max Tuerk that ruined a first-and-10 situation on the UCLA 24.

“Their defensive coaches did a great job,” Lee said, referring to Mora's staff. “A lot of times Matt would see something that I didn't see, or I'd see something he didn't. On the first interception, I should have slowed down in the hole. I thought I saw something. Matt thought I'd slow down there. On my fumble I thought I was down, but I was trying to do too much.”

But then there was Barkley stepping away from a mad rush, rolling out and floating a perfect drone to Lee for 39 yards, an exquisite play that will be on the tape cut-up in every NFL scouting office.

USC then cut the lead to three. UCLA responded with Brett Hundley converting a third-and-13 to 6-foot-8 Joseph Fauria.

Hundley was 22 for 30 with no turnovers, Barkley 20 for 38 with two.

“You wouldn't think we would lose this game with a senior quarterback versus a freshman,” Kiffin said. “But we've lost too many games compared to the talent we have, and that falls on me.”

Some will say that Barkley made a mistake when he returned to USC and turned down NFL milk and honey, particularly when so many rookie quarterbacks are prospering.

The only man who has a right to that opinion is Barkley. As long as he doesn't question himself, nobody else should.

The real questions descend on a team and a coach and a season that never functioned.

What if someone had told Lee, in September, that the Trojans would lose four times, with a game left?

“I would have laughed,” Lee said, and then he did laugh, softly and briefly and mockingly.

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